Bigfoot Captured: Abominable?
Posted by: Craig Woolheater on November 11th, 2015
Last night, The History Channel aired a two-hour special entitled Breaking History: Bigfoot Captured, a title presumably chosen because it directly refers to the mission of said program in breaking any conceivable perception that a network like History Channel might possibly air programs about, oh I don’t know, history.
Let’s say, for a second, in a purely hypothetical scenario, that I was made the supreme overseer of Hell, the realm of eternal punishment and suffering. In Jim’s new and revised Hell dimension, there would be a level devoted entirely to television producers who conceived and aired content in the style of Bigfoot Captured. There, surrounded by the wailing voices of 10,000 History Channel, Animal Planet and Discovery Channel executives, you would find the crews behind Mermaids: The Body Found, Megalodon: The New Evidence and others, sharing a cozy abode in the lake of fire. That’s my dream scenario.
Of course, in the real world, I suppose I would settle for everyone involved to simply be fired. And possibly put into a pillory and pelted with rotten vegetables, time permitting.
These shows, examples of so-called “docu-tainment” that have become commonplace (and huge ratings successes) on networks that have educational aims in their mission statements, are indicative of everything that is wrong in 21st century media. The fact that you have networks such as History Channel, Discovery and Animal Planet willfully and consciously planting falsehoods into the minds of their audience is absolutely shameful. There’s no other word for it. The people involved should be ashamed of themselves, because they are causing very real, literal harm. They’re actively performing the polemic opposite of their network’s stated function. I see no difference between this and learning that a grade school teacher is teaching your kid that we live in a Geocentric universe.
Your response to this outrage is probably to say “Oh come on, Jim, it’s entertainment. People know the sasquatch documentary they’re watching on History Channel is just entertainment. What’s the harm?”
The problem is that no, not everyone knows it’s entertainment. And if you’re intelligent enough to know that, then you should also realize that it’s the impressionable people watching who most need a source they can actually trust in order to provide real information. These people don’t need entertainment. They need a network that’s actually serving their best interest—and for the record, their best interest is “Not having pseudoscientific beliefs that they’ll pass on to anyone in earshot.”
Read the rest of the article by James Vorel at Paste Magazine here: History Channel’s Bigfoot Captured Was a TV Abomination
#HistoryChannel #BigfootCaptured #committeefilms
Co-founder of Cryptomundo in 2005.
I have appeared in or contributed to the following TV programs, documentaries and films:
OLN's Mysterious Encounters: "Caddo Critter", Southern Fried Bigfoot, Travel Channel's Weird Travels: "Bigfoot", History Channel's MonsterQuest: "Swamp Stalker", The Wild Man of the Navidad, Destination America's Monsters and Mysteries in America: Texas Terror - Lake Worth Monster, Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot: Return to Boggy Creek and Beast of the Bayou.
Go Jim! I for one am sick of the “docu-tainment” nonsense. The Mermaids show was ridiculous, same with the giant shark and so on. It’s nothing more than a show designed to try to fool people into thinking they’re watching something legitimate.
And it gives a bad name to cryptozoology, not to mention their own channels.
The History Channel and Animal Planet used to be channels you could go to…to be informed and actually learn something, but now they’re just another reality station trying to gain ratings.
Sad.
I not only agree wholeheartedly, I’m in favor of arming the Big People with ARs and AKs (and maybe some rocket launchers) and teaching them how to use ’em, so that a scenario like that can never happen!
Who’s with me?